Staff

Staff

Eric Lewis

Director

Eric Lewis

Director

Eric Lewis is an Associate Professor in the department of Philosophy. Trained in physics, classics and philosophy, he focused on research in ancient greek natural philosophy for many years, before turning to research and practice in the improvisatory arts. Deeply committed to cross-disciplinary research, Prof. Lewis is active in bringing disparate disciplines to the same table in innovative efforts to solve research problems often with a strong social activist bent. He is a film-maker, visual art curator, new technology designer (focusing on adaptive interfaces and mobile apps) and new-media art producer. An active improviser on brass and electronics, Prof. Lewis has had the pleasure of performing internationally with a number of the most creative and innovative musicians of the day. He runs, along with Medea Electronique, an annual New Media Improvised Art Residency program in Greece, and partners regularly with SALA in Montreal in the curation of innovative and socially conscious art events. A member of a number of research centres and institutes (including ICASP, IICSI, IGSF, IHSP, CIRMMT) Prof. Lewis’ present research projects, all highly practice based, include: working with disabled youth to facilitate their ability to form community via collective music-making, working with at-risk teens to confront racism via improvised personal narratives, investigating the therapeutic potentials of improvisation for addressing assorted mental,cognitive and social illnesses, investigating what new robotics might tell us about agency and identity, the development and testing of new adaptive control surfaces, and the articulation of an Afrological aesthetics appropriate to the highly improvisatory arts characteristic of many strands of African diasporic arts. He has received funding from numerous sources such as SSHRC, Rick Hansen Foundation, Griffen Foundation, NEH, The City of Montreal. He is the author of: Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotle’s Meteorlogica Book IV, The Video Art of Sylvia Safdie, and co-editor of the forthcoming Improvisation and Social Aesthetics. He is the executive producer of the film Koumaria: Improvising Across Boundaries in New Media Art and community. His published articles range across disciplines including philosophy, classics, law, musicology, cultural studies, disabilities studies, film studies, history of science and improvisational studies. He is currently completing a manuscript entitled: Intents and Purposes: Towards an Afrological Aesthetics of Improvisation. As a member of IICSI and ICASP, he has organized over a dozen international conferences, and numerous workshops, concerts, performances, reading groups and interventions. He is a member of assorted European-based sound-art collectives and consortiums, and sits on the board of SALA and the Jazz Studies Center of Columbia University J-Disc. He sits on the editorial boards of Foundations of Chemistry and Critical Studies in Improvisation.

Sheetal Lodhia

Executive Director

Sheetal Lodhia

Executive Director

Sheetal Lodhia has been working to foster relationships between academic institutions and the world-at-large, championing interdisciplinarity, collaboration and broad purchase for knowledge. She has a history of involvement in the nonprofit and social innovation sector, working with grassroots organizations, arts-education groups and policy organizations in strategic planning, community engagement and grant acquisition. She sits on the advisory committee for The Institute for a Resource-Based Economy (IRBE), the founders of Toronto’s first Tool Libraries. She is a board member of Teesri Duniya Theatre, which is a theatre company dedicated to reflecting Quebec’s multicultural, multiracial and aboriginal histories.

A doctoral graduate in English Literature from Queen’s University, she has researched and taught in Renaissance poetry, prose and drama, history of medicine, colonialism and cultural studies. She has produced articles, art installations, a video documentary short and radio documentaries. Sheetal also founded Black Leg Productions, a company that is one-part creative production and one-part think-tank. As a matter of course, she consumes popular culture with abandon, and harbours fantasies of becoming a pro-tennis player.